What do I want my life to be about?

That’s the question posed by the highly anticipated movie To Save a Life, which hits theaters on January 22. The movie covers the issues facing teenagers and young adults today—depression, loneliness, drinking, even suicide.

“I’m not a counselor,” screenwriter and producer Jim Britts says. “But I do know that students are more isolated than they’ve ever been. Fifty percent of guys spend 42 hours a week staring at a computer screen. Students are so isolated from real community.”

The goal of the film is twofold: to bring hope to hurting students and to empower young people to reach out to the hurt and lonely. “If you’re a follower of Christ, you’re called to be an imitator,” Britts says. “You’re never more like Jesus than when you’re reaching out to the hurt and lonely. There’s not a page in the four Gospels where Jesus doesn’t reach out to the hurting, lonely, left out, and lost.”
 
But Britts says they never set out to make a faith-based film—they set out to create a story any teenager would automatically connect with. “In the film, we don’t make a blanket statement separating Christians from non-Christians. Instead, the bad guy is actually the senior pastor’s son,” Britts says. “There’s definitely hypocrisy in the church. People who’ve seen the film have told us us, ‘You’re not trying to push something on me. You’re telling it in an authentic way.’”

Also interesting is Britts’ intentional decision to communicate that becoming a Christian won’t automatically mean all your problems will be solved. After the main character, Jake, becomes a Christian, his life actually falls apart and he’s left questioning whether the whole God thing is working out. “It asks the question, Are you going to trust God because he’s going to make your life great or because you need him?” Britts says.

Although Britts was a film major in college and once had plans to live in Hollywood as a screenwriter, he has been serving as a youth pastor at New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California, for the last 10 years. He says his experience working with youth inspired every part of the film.

“Every character is based off a student I’ve had, and several of the story lines came from true stories,” Britts says. “The most common response we get when people see the movie is that it’s so real—like we walked on their high school campus and filmed. That’s based on years of working with high school students and their pain. We knew we weren’t going to be able to help unless we dug in and showed that in an authentic way.”

Britts says the best thing teenagers and young adults can do to help the hurting and lonely around them is to listen. “One of our taglines is, ‘People are dying to be heard,’” Britts says. “If you just listen, you’ll find that many of your family members, friends, and coworkers are going through pain. We want to empower students to have relationships with people and ultimately introduce them to God.”

To find out more, go to www.tosavealifemovie.com.